Recently in Cooking Category

A Web developer in Atlanta has developed a meal replacement called Soylent. This drink seemingly achieves what I wanted many years ago.

There are a couple objections raised in various fora:

1. This guy's just a Web developer. How could he have succeeded where all these vested interests have failed?
2. His concoction is missing the mark on our nutritional needs and he's a goner.

As a fan of the idea behind the product, I want to address these without commenting on his specific solution since I haven't tried it and am barely familiar with the field of nutrition.

I think that this type of product hasn't really been tried outside of medical supply firms. If you look at the field of convenience foods, they typically compete on quality, taste, or price. I have to think that the market for a simple, plain drink that addresses extreme laziness is pretty limited. Most people I know like cooking, variety, or mouth feel. Most people, when learning of Soylent, recoil at the idea of eating the same glop every meal.

So it doesn't surprise me that this market hasn't developed and it doesn't surprise me that someone like me would have created this.

But has he gotten it right? He claims to have read a nutrition textbook and looked on the Internet for the necessary nutrients. Naturally, this has people in an uproar—forgetting that people eat a lot of junk, many exclusively so. The human body is pretty forgiving about what you shove down your mouth hole.

In my original blog entry, I suggested that "People Chow" should take a solid form. I think this is probably a better direction than Soylent because of the need for solids to keep the muscles involved in peristalsis from atrophying. Plus, the idea of adding milk to the solids could provide some variety.

At any rate, I am excited that there's some progress on this front. I signed up to be a beta tester and will document it here if I make it in.

Someone else has had my same desire to be free of mealtime variety. Monkey chow, that was the missing link! Sadly, the "experiment" has been rather glib, resorting to the obvious "you are what you eat" cheap jokes. My original sentiment was serious: I would love to see a cheap food source developed that was nutritionally complete and available in huge quantities. I guess I'll just have to keep waiting. {via}

A couple of weeks ago I was feeding my dogs like I do every morning and I thought of an idea. Dog Chow contains everything a dog needs nutritionally. It costs $14.99 for a 55-pound bag. Purina should make something like it for people and call it Man Chow or People Chow—the latter is probably closer to Puppy Chow and rolls off the tongue ("Purina People Chow").

I'm sure science could come up with a nugget-based pellet that gives humans everything they need. I'm also sure that the needs of people aren't drastically different from dogs and cats. A large bag of it might end up costing $20 because of the necessary vitamins, but that's still a good price point. You might also need to eat it in milk to get additional nutrients, but that would be optional.

What about taste, you ask? Isn't taste a multi-billion dollar industry? That is a very good point because people like variety. Ahh, but what if people don't really like the variety? If you watch any science-fiction movie set in the future, inevitably the food they eat is of the pellet, globule, or goo type and the people eat it with gusto. At some point, we've got to get away from appearances in our food and attack the problem from a strictly nutritional standpoint. I, for one, am sick of having to pick meals from an infinite slate of options each and every day. I suppose that the food could come in different flavors, a sop to tradition.

That price point would also fit in with the needs of the underdeveloped, starving Third World. For them, the People Chow would be infinitely better than dropping dead from hunger. Obviously, that's a huge market right there.

If you (or Purina) want to use this idea, knock yourself out. I don't expect royalties, disclaim any ownership, and forego any rights. I would be the first customer, so be sure to let me know about it though.

If you think this is weird, check your premises. Why would the value of cheap, healthy food necessarily outweigh or supplant the gustatory pleasures of gourmet? The two could co-exist. Think outside the box, Johnson.

The title is "Is the Seeking of Lost Skills/Arts a Hacking Analog?" and the discussion is fascinating. The article suggests that the temperament that furthers programming is the same that has an interest in so-called lost arts, which are really just doing things the old way and really getting your hands dirty. I've found myself more than once desiring to delve into lithography and pre-computing printery. I'm also fascinated by gardening and the control available there. I find them all quite analogous to programming. Unfortunately, I don't have time for printing or gardening (plus, I'm not a big fan of gardening in 115 heat here in Phoenix).

One underdone art/science that I'm diving into more is cooking. I'm a big fan of Alton Brown's Good Eats cooking show and I love his book. I've just picked up a couple of meta-cooking books from the library recommended by Alton Brown and am currently reading On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee.